


5 Deaths Agent Washington Never Lived

by ZaliaChimera



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: 5 Times, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Blood, Blood and Injury, Character Death, Death, Drowning, Gen, Heavy Angst, Injury, Not Happy, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-09
Updated: 2017-04-09
Packaged: 2018-10-16 22:38:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10580937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZaliaChimera/pseuds/ZaliaChimera
Summary: Nothing is beautiful and everything hurts.5 ways things could have gone. It only takes one slip.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Written for RvB Bingo Wars for the glory of Blue Team.

1.  
David grows up angry and stays angry. 

It starts with a grudge and a shattered mirror, sure, but it continues with blood on his knuckles and split lips and broken teeth. It's mostly other people's, and he can see the disappointment in his mom's eyes when he gets dragged back home again in the back of a cop car, because apparently they'd rather spend their time picking on him instead of fixing things in the pit of a mining town that he calls home. 

He won't call it home forever. He swears he won't. He's gonna get off this dump and then he's gonna let the universe know that he exists.

The recruiters come through just after his eighteenth birthday. David shows up at the office in the stiffest shirt he owns. He knows he has the scores. He's fit enough, and smart enough, and the UNSC is desperate enough. He should be a shoe-in. 

He leaves with a rejected stamp on his application, a red smear of ink citing his history of violence and aggression, his run-ins with the police and other students, as grounds to refuse him. 

He's not angry. He just doesn't understand. They want soldiers, they want violence and aggression and _why_?! He can't be trapped here forever! He _can't_.

He watches the ships leave, half the kids he'd known from school on the transports out to basic. They all know how things are here. The only way to have a life is to get the fuck off-world. And here he still is. Stagnant. Live and die on this miserable rock.

The news reports on Earth barely mention the small outer colony world, just one more in a list of those lost.

 

2.  
Someone’s outside the door.

_No! Please. Not- not again. I’m so so tired._

When did it get so late? 

_I just need more time!_

Maybe… maybe you should go to medical.

_They can’t be dead! No! No… I was right that time!_

Why are they being so loud out there?

Why is there blood on the floor?

Under your fingernails?

Everywhere?

_Please! I can do better. I just- I just need more time._

 

3.  
The impact of the water knocks the breath out of him. Pain swells in his chest, the sharp crack of broken ribs overlaid on earlier pain, squeezing and tightening around his ribcage.

And the Meta’s hand around his leg.  
Wash kicks out, time dragged out by the water, every movement sluggish. The Meta reaches by dragging him closer, as relentless as the current. 

He can taste blood in his mouth, but that’s normal right now, that’s expected, and not half as alarming as the flashing warning in the corner of his HUD. Armour breach. He can feel the icy creep of water, seeping through the holes in his undersuit, bringing a slinking numbness with it. 

A jerk, the Meta’s other hand closing around his thigh. The water is red and he can’t tell if it’s the Meta’s or his. He bends his legs, tries to kick away again, but the movement is half aborted, weak from the pain and exhaustion.

He is so tired.

He struggles weakly when the Meta drags him against his chest. Pathetic. He can feel blood on his lips, and the bubbling rasp of it in his chest. The Meta’s arms around him holding him close and he’s tired, worn to the bone by time and care and what is left for him after this? Drowning here or a different drowning up there. It’s all an ending.

He’s been waiting so long for this to end. 

The oxygen monitor flickers red. Critical. The ice has reached his chin, still creeping in. The Meta is still, a weight dragging him down,

Water touches his lips. Wash breathes in.

 

4\.   
“Well?”

Emily looks up from the splay of brain scans fanned out across her desk. She doesn’t have her helmet on, and is very aware of how vulnerable she is without it. She still meets Locus’ visor squarely, her lips pursed together. 

“What?”

Locus tilts his head slightly, like a bird considering a worm. Emily is not a worm. If Locus wants to know something, he can damn well use his words and ask like a normal person.

“Where is Agent Washington?” Locus finally says.

“In the morgue,” Emily replies. “Awaiting information from his friends about funeral arrangements, such as we can offer.”

She is darkly gratified when Locus stiffens, the twitch of his shoulders.   
“He is dead?”

“I don’t go putting living people in the Morgue, sweetie,” she replies. “That just wouldn’t be sanitary at all.”

“You were supposed to save him,” Locus says. There’s a growl in his voice and Emily just looks back. She’s living through a war. She survived med school. She’s seen worse.

“And I was also supposed to take up a Professorship at a college on Earth. But sometimes we don’t get what we want.”

Locus’ fingers twitch against his gun. But Emily is exhausted and hollow and half an hour ago she’s had her fingers inside Agent Washington’s brain trying to fix more damage than should be survivable. She’d been right about that, in the end.

“We needed him,” Locus said, and the tone of his voice makes something inside her snap.

“Well, that’s why we don’t shoot people in the head unless we really want them dead.”

Something must get through to him, be it her tone, or the look in her eyes, or possibly the scalpel that’s suddenly in her hand. He looks like he wants to do something, but draws back a step. “I will go and pass the message on to the prisoners.”

“You do that.”

“You should get some sleep Doctor.”

He steps outside and closes the door behind himself.

He’s right about one thing. She should sleep. And the worst of it is that she knows she’ll sleep like the dead.

 

5\.   
The dust eventually settles, and Carolina drops the shield, breathing heavily. Her HUD is still blinking feebly, and Epsilon is exhausted static in the back of her mind, but she surveys the ruins of the Purge tower, and the Tartarus, and she feels triumphant. It’s a glow that fills her belly and swells through her chest.

It’ll fade soon, when reality comes crashing back down, but right now, it feels like they’ve won.

“Well, that was fun,” she says. “How you holding up Wash?” Neither of them is in the best shape, but they’ve both been worse, and the way they’d worked together is still fresh in her mind. It had been good to work with him again.

She’s distracted by Epsilon’s slow unfurling in her head, and it takes a moment before she realises that Wash hasn’t replied.

“Wash?”

Carolina…

Epsilon’s voice is small and there’s something about it that sets her on edge.

She turns, wonders why the world is moving so slowly. Wash is curled up on the ground, armour dark with dust and grit. She takes a step towards him, pushes down Epsilon’s frantic flickering.

“Wash…”

She can see the rise and fall of his chest. But now that the overwhelming noise of the crash is gone, and her helmet radio is working, she can hear his breathing. It’s ragged and every breath rasps with wetness.

She’s at his side in a second, crouching in the dirt. Up close, in the weird red light which permeates the area, she can see the twisted chunk of metal which has punctured the chest armour. There’s blood spattered on the ground beneath him.

She rests a hand against his shoulder. Wash shifts, but the movement drags a cry of pain from him. Epsilon flares. She can feel his anxiety bordering on panic, can feel him reaching for Wash’s armour, for information, the deep desire to jump into it, to find out, that he can’t suppress but doesn’t dare act on. Forces it away to focus on Wash.

She pulls off his helmet. His face is white, blood around his lips. He spits a glob of blood out onto the ground and sucks in another of those breaths thick with liquid.

“Boss…”

She fumbles for the healing unit, her fingers suddenly clumsy and uncoordinated. Ignores Epsilon’s rapid calculations, scenario after scenario searching for the one set of numbers where this ends well. She snaps the healing unit onto his armour. It glows softly green but it’s not enough, it’s never enough.  
“I’ll call for backup,” she says. He voice sounds distant even to her own ears. 

Wash tries to shake his head, but she holds him still. “I- this is it, Carolina,” he manages to rasp out. “They can’t get here in time.”

He’s right. She can feel the truth of it in Epsilon’s calculations. The remaining forces are spread too thin, with too little equipment and never enough time. 

But it’s Wash.

His heartbeat is a fading drum as she checks his pulse, stuttering and starting and she can’t- she lost everyone else. She can’t lose him too. She just has to be better, has to be faster, but it’s not enough, it’s never enough.

The thought echoes through her head, makes Epsilon shudder and shy away. 

“Carolina…” Wash says, his voice barely a whisper. There’s blood on his teeth, blood on the ground, blood on her hands. “Take care of them.”

She wants to lie. She wants to lie to herself. But she can feel the hard cold numbers ticking over in the back of her mind. Can feel Epsilon shaking and splintering, dragging himself together only to spool out again, a fraction of what Wash must have felt back then. 

Wash drags in a harsh breath. Releases it.

He doesn’t take another.


End file.
